


A Mist of Memory

by intheheart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Mass Effect 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8351386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intheheart/pseuds/intheheart
Summary: This is a short piece written from the POV of my Shepard's teenage first love years later, after she heard about Julia Shepard after the events at the beginning of Mass Effect 2. Adriana Belkt and Julia Shepard met when they were 15 and fell in love. Julia was still street tough, lonely, and on an unknown path. Adriana was the daughter of a rich and powerful businessman. They were driven apart, but one day, Adri watches the vids as her children play...( I wrote this fast due to out of nowhere inspiration, so I may make some future edits to preserve the timeline accuracy.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for the beginning of Mass Effect 2.
> 
> Adriana is bisexual and Julia is lesbian.

"...that the ship was attacked. No confirmation on the condition of all of the survivors just yet, but we hear that Commander Julia Shepard went back to save others before being lost. Commander Shepard was just 30 years old...."

The vids, I always have to know what's going on. You don't stay on top of one of the galaxy's biggest companies by remaining in the dark. But that morning, hearing your name again, something I had imagined a thousand times before the notion faded into the air, an impossibility. I hadn't heard anything about you since that day. Your name, echoing, heavy, slowed and reverberating. Julia. Julia Shepard. I had always hoped you made it somewhere, were happy, living a good life that took you to the adventure you were so obviously made for. I would've weighed you down in the end. My father was right that we were wrong, but I wish we would've been able to discover that for ourselves.

Yet, maybe this way preserves the sweetness and relegates the bitter to the decision he made that day; something that never taints you, and never will. Why do we find it so easy to talk to ghosts, but so difficult when present? I stopped looking, eventually. He kept your letters from me, deleted files, wrecked databases. Alejandro Belkt was never one to be denied his way. I found file traces one day in my mail system. Your name at the bottom, Julia, your prose still hopeful. "Adri, I miss the warm orange glow in your brown eyes as you welcome my lips with yours at sunset. I wait for a sign of you," a sign that I could never deliver. Your beautiful words sank my heart. I confronted my father. 

My heart was racing as I stomped in there. The pain, the weight, all of that concentrated in my chest and I didn't know if it was anger or relief that you remembered me. Then it all caved in on itself when I thought of you, your wide blue eyes, the peace on your face when we stumbled through lovemaking, giggling, breathy, free. That peace, I imagined it blurred with your usual worry. I didn't disappear, Julia. He made me go. I was, in that instant, so, so sorry for the pain I knew you had been through. If only I could have gotten word.

"Adriana, yes," he admitted more easily than expected, " She wrote to you. I was only trying to protect you," he said. I left, silently, the tears hot behind my eyes. It was three years later. I was on a break after my graduation and before I entered the business academy where I would hone my instincts, sharpen my skills, learn to be a negotiator, a leader. I was close to 19. You would've been 18 then too. A new Alliance recruit. I didn't know. 

I tried to come see you after talking to my father. To apologize. To tell you I had finally received traces of your correspondence. I went to the old complex once. Nothing. 

And now today. Your name echoing. My daughter plays with her animal toys in the background, roaring and squeaking and growling in estimation of a wildness a girl who lives in a shiny city tower can muster. Julia. Gone again. Lost to me, to the world, but having made good. You saved people. On that, my father was always wrong. Still, I don't fault him for believing he saved me. You were running with the Reds, and there was no way Alejandro Belkt would believe his daughter safe with someone from the streets, running with a gang, even a scout. 

I loved you, Julia, and though we would have grown and changed, and possibly been each other's greatest champions, we never got that chance. I'm a little ashamed that I stopped looking completely, but this is a thought made after I know you're gone. The rush of memories from out of the mist, like a packed closet revealing secrets, regrets, guilt, anger for moments missed. Fifteen years later, and I turn this all in my mind, taste the lemon on your skin on that last day we had together. I swallow the bitterness of being pulled onto the transport the following morning. I just saw yet another blocked path that was my family's doing, my father's doing, for being Adriana Belkt, only child of that businessman, whose heart and desires could never be free, who could never make a decision on her own. Your eyes always told me a different story. Your lips, hot and tender, your hands cradling my waist, it was your eyes that spoke loudest and told me I was precious. You saw Adri, not the Belkt girl. For that, I am forever grateful.

Rest peacefully, Julia. I hope you lived well, but if those reports are true, I think you realized enough of your potential, and these tears, they are full of pride. I knew you. You knew me.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a lot of headcanon that I never really wrote until now. Adriana is shocked here into revisiting memories when she learns Julia has died, but two years later, when Shepard is back, my headcanon has them meet again. 
> 
> Julia and Liara are together forever, but Adriana becomes an important ally, and both of them settle a lot.


End file.
